


Angelic

by TeaCub90



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Affection, Christmas, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt: Angel, Protective Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaCub90/pseuds/TeaCub90
Summary: ‘Well – I never said I could cook!’ Crowley protests, even as he fights a smile himself and promptly, the head of the angel – the marzipan one, that is, not Aziraphale’s own – falls off.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge





	Angelic

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'angel,' I'm posting this about two days late as I'm not one of those truly remarkable writers who can finish something every single day; hats off to those who can. I salute you.

* * *

When Crowley wanders into the bookshop – evading annoying Christmas shoppers and their annoying spending habits and their annoying, heavy bags and their annoying, ongoing obsession with _Frozen_ – it’s to find Aziraphale leaning against the counter, looking rather hard-done-by and not-so-covertly dabbing at his eyes with his favourite handkerchief.

The sight makes Crowley instant furious as few other things do – Christmas shoppers and their determination to go into debt, for one and the moneymaking franchise Disney spun Frozen into for another – and he puts down the box he’s carrying – white and rectangular, a treat inside, and hurries across, throwing the door shut after him. The fact that he’s not even chided for such a forceful slam is another indicator that things Aren’t Quite Right.

‘Hey, hey, angel, come on now, it’s alright. Just tell me who’s upset you and I’ll sort them out.’

Aziraphale gives a nervous titter into his handkerchief, perhaps borne of his knowledge of past experiences of Crowley ‘sorting people out’ – French Revolutionaries and Nazis, to name but a few. His hands are shaking, Crowley realises and glancing around, he realises some of the books are out of order on the shelves as though they’ve been put back in a hazardous fashion i.e. without a simple snap of the fingers. Now _that’s_ a bad sign, to be sure and Crowley drags across a couple of chairs, steers the angel into one and slumps into the other. He had a go at being a therapist once, he’s got this. (The philandering, abusive husband of his poor client wasn’t too impressed with his approach, which was to help her drain all his accounts and start divorce proceedings, but he’s got this).

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ Aziraphale sniffles; looks rather tired. ‘What must you think of me?’

‘Hey.’ Crowley shrugs his shoulders, lets his voice saunter like he’s strolling downstairs. ‘We all have bad days, angel. It’s alright.’ He watches him for a moment, noting his movements, his nervous hand-gestures and brings out the big guns: he takes off his glasses and he leans forward in his chair. ‘Talk to me?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Aziraphale shakes his head. ‘I’ve just had…a bit of a terrible morning. The… _humans,’_ he gestures out of the window, referencing the aforementioned humans in much the same manner as he might have done chickens, ‘are being difficult.’

Crowley immediately straightens up. ‘Which ones?’ He cranes his head to glance out the window, wondering if the offending civilians are still local and how exactly they might feel about losing their pants in the middle of the high street. Nothing like a little bit local chaos to add some flavour and it would make Aziraphale smile, even though he’d be trying hard to deny it, his mouth twitching determinedly at the corners while he tried to maintain a professional, angelic stance.

But today, Aziraphale is neither of those things. He just looks a little helpless and despite the years they’ve lived on this world, slightly lost. ‘Gone now, I’m afraid.’ His tone suggests he wouldn’t have entirely _minded_ Crowley dishing out a humiliation or three on this occasion, but that really, on the whole, he’s just very, very tired.

Crowley huffs, watching him, disregarding the other possibilities in favour of doing his best to offer a little comfort. He’s not like other demons, after all and he leans forward, clasping his hands together over his knees. ‘It’s called Festive Fever, angel, that’s the problem – their minds go completely blank and become full of – of Christmas, convincing themselves that yeah, they actually like their insufferable Uncle Derek who voted Brexit and follows Trump on Twitter and why not buy the entire Sylvanian family collection for the kids for a lark, tis the season to be bankrupt, fa-la-la-la, la-la-la-la,’ he finishes on a trill; glances at Aziraphale’s face and immediately wishes he hadn’t. ‘Don’t take it personally. We’ve been around long enough – you know what they get like at this time of year.’

They’ve lived through many of them, after all – sometimes together, often apart. They both remember the first official Christmas, for crying out loud; the cattle, the choir of singing angels, King Herod going off on a Trump-esque tantrum. Joy and sorrow, together. Fitting, perhaps, given where they are now. Crowley half-wonders if he preferred the carol-singing, cap-wearing childishness of the later 1800s when thanks to Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens both, you’d be content with a pair of new woollen mittens, carol-singers around a roaring fire and a hot goose, but it’s true that the telephone still had a long way to go and anyway, he and Aziraphale weren’t talking at the time.

‘I suppose,’ Aziraphale is musing aloud. ‘It just seems – a bit different, this year. Or at least today,’ he huffs, reaching up to squeeze the bridge of his nose. ‘Do I have this book. No, I _don’t_ have that book, I’m an antique bookseller, I don’t sell cheap novelisations of the _Star Wars_ films, madam, there’s a perfectly good Waterstones just along the way should you wish to buy them there. Well, why _don’t_ I sell more books like that – I should sell more books like that, _I’m a bookshop, mate, I should definitely sell books like that!’_

He raises his voice mockingly, like a shrill bird making no attempt to hide its upset. ‘And then I had a mother come in with her child and she was just…standing there, talking on her phone to someone called Tiffany –’ Crowley snorts, he can’t help it, ‘ – and letting her son get his – his sticky fingers _all over my volumes,_ as though I’m some sort of _crèche,_ pulling them out all over the place and when I asked him to _stop,_ she got exceedingly cross and told me off for upsetting him.’ He lets out a breath. ‘And then someone else asked me why there wasn’t a café in here.’ He shudders, clearly insulted; Crowley winces.

‘I’m sorry, angel,’ he offers, a little pointlessly because none of that sounds very fair. Not on Aziraphale. Crowley takes parents with a pinch of salt – he doesn’t _mind_ kids, rather admires their use of imagination and initiative, Adam Young and his gang of musketeers literally saving the world on teamwork and gumption alone proving to be rather a good case in point – but it angers him when parents expect the whole bloody world to cater to their child’s whims.

Crowley and Aziraphale know London intimately; they know the rich areas and the poor ones and they know the difference between a family who are just grateful to have a roof over their head and some hot food in their bellies and a family who take everything for granted and teach their kids to do the same. Crowley was never quite sure what to make of the Dowling parents for Warlock; knows Mrs Dowling, at least, did her very, very best by her son and after being the boy’s nanny for the better part of five years, likes to think that he somewhat knows the reality of the kid, despite the embarrassing mix-up at the hospital. He hopes that in the long term, they haven’t done too much damage. Somehow, he doubts it; Warlock is very much of his own mind. Another one who’s _human incarnate,_ to borrow a phrase.

‘It’s alright, angel.’ He reaches out, tentative, lays his hand over Aziraphale’s own – blinks as the angel smiles, a little wider and turns his own hand over, holds on tight. ‘I think it’s just…unusual, this year. I _think,’_ he bites his lip, considers it, that energy he’s been feeling on the streets. ‘They can all…sense it, somehow, how close they came to losing everything. And this is their way of dealing with it, probably. Add to cart; the perfect Christmas.’

He shrugs, a little helpless and Aziraphale raises both eyebrows at that, nods; he’s been thinking it too, then. He’s recognised the signs, that frantic, tripping kind of energy in the air and it’s reassuring, to know that Crowley’s not been alone in that. He’s not above a little _carpe diem_ – still, doesn’t mean people have got to be completely horrendous about it. With that in mind, he snaps his fingers and the shop rights itself; book volumes back in their proper places and no longer upside down and a drink from the decanter on Aziraphale’s desk finds itself in the angel’s hands.

‘Oh. Thankyou, my dear. Thankyou.’ He takes a small sip; lifts his shoulders and then lets them drop. Amazing how the stress of the human-race can rub off on an ethereal being.

‘I got you something,’ Crowley says, after giving him a moment to breathe. Getting to his feet, he plucks up the box he brought in, lifts the lid open with a flourish. ‘Ta-da. Or something. Picked up fresh from that bakery you like.’

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale lets out a delighted laugh and Crowley can’t hide his preen. ‘A Yule Log! Oh, my dear fellow.’ He’s beaming, wide and full and something in Crowley relaxes as he takes it carefully from him and lays it on the counter with a smile and promise of a full appetite, even as he registers what’s sitting atop the icing. ‘Oh, but – what’s this?’

Crowley grimaces. Yeah, he knows. Not all the gifts he’s brought for Aziraphale over the years have made it through – a bag of pears here, a box of chocolates there – all being taken away on a U-turn when he arrived and found Gabriel lurking around the shop with Sandalphon, his faithful Whatever, trailing behind, the pair of them ready to subtly intimidate and raise stakes just to see Aziraphale sweat. He wanted to make a real effort today – and he tried. He really, really tried.

‘Yeah – it’s meant to be an angel,’ he grimaces as Aziraphale pulls off the odd, squashy figure on a stick embedded into one side of the log, made haphazardly out of marzipan and rather looking like the universal female figure on the door of a lady’s toilets who went out for one drink – _one_ drink – and ended up staying for seventeen thousand. Culinary skills aren’t really Crowley’s thing, not even in the shape of a miracle.

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale looks up, shocked for a split-second – and then his shock abruptly turns into laughter, his mouth curved up like a crescent moon and he throws a hand over his mouth, his whole face enraptured. ‘Oh, my dear,’ he collapses in giggles, one hand grasping the counter behind him, the other grasping the poor unfortunate angel on the stick. ‘Oh, that really is terribly amusing.’ He beams down at the marzipan figure as though it’s a _Morecambe and Wise_ sketch (Crowley has memories of Christmases past – or more specifically, the 1970s when they were patching their friendship back up with offers of dinner and drinks – of Aziraphale, howling at some television special or other, more than a little drunk and finding everything incredibly entertaining, his face soft and happy beneath the lights.

The 70s were alright, really).

‘Well – I never said I could cook!’ Crowley protests, even as he fights a smile himself and promptly, the head of the angel – the marzipan one, that is, not Aziraphale’s own – falls off.

They both stare at it, lying on the floor with a rather exhausted air of _I came, I tried, I failed, now please leave me be_ and then Aziraphale laughs even harder, loud and long like an extremely chuffed bell as he wipes his eyes once more, this time for a far lovelier reason. Crowley winds up giving himself a big mental pat on the back and would even be up for a high-five if this was 1991 and that was the kind of thing they did.

Aziraphale, however, goes one better: he _hugs_ him.

‘Oh, my dear,’ he manages, squeezing the moisture from his eyes as he steps forward to ensconce Crowley in his arms, holding him close in that all-encompassing embrace that, really, makes Crowley feel safer here than he’s ever felt anywhere else in the world. ‘Thankyou. Thankyou so much.’

‘Shut up,’ Crowley manages, without much heat; gets a shushing, chaste kiss on the cheek for his troubles that has him blinking, feeling suddenly rather vulnerable without the protection of his glasses at the prospect of such affection, so easily given. Even if his chin is propped on Aziraphale’s shoulder; even if his arms are splayed carefully, so carefully, across Aziraphale’s back – in a manner that reminds him of his snake days, wrapping himself loosely and lazily around a tree-trunk for no other reason than to catch the sun.

Aziraphale holds him, and holds him and holds him and in the secrecy of the shop – which has probably had its _Closed_ sign turned towards overzealous Christmas shoppers by way of a small miracle – they _breathe,_ away from the hubbub and the irritating parents and demanding children and the constant, endless _noise._ Crowley considers the now-headless marzipan angel, still clutched in Aziraphale’s hand and considers the fact that by the smallest of minor miracles, the angel could improve its entire appearance in a heartbeat. Or maybe not.

‘Can I tempt you to a slice of Yule Log, my dear?’ Aziraphale smiles as they step apart eventually, looking far more relaxed than he did ten minutes ago and more than a little hopeful. ‘I’m just about done for the day. And how about some wine?’

‘Tempt away,’ Crowley shrugs, replacing his glasses and promptly pretends not to notice the way Aziraphale bends down, reattaches the angel’s head carefully with the smallest click of the fingers and carries it over to place reverently on top of his writing-desk, next to his old quill.

*


End file.
